standing, a slave in bondage to him: she is either a wife to her husband, or a sister to her brother, or a daughter to her father? My father was very rich, but he gave up all his wealth when he followed Gandhi and applied his teachings, so that overnight we owned nothing at all. A little after this I married a man of wealth, as I have already said; but do you know that at my husband's death — and we had had only three daughters — I could not dispose of a single piaster of his money, for his whole fortune went, according to the Hindu laws, to his brother? From that time on I have worked in order to live: I work as an official in the government of my country, and I write for various newspapers and magazines.

I used to draw a fair salary when I was India's ambassador in Moscow and Washington; but today I have returned to my country simply as a member of parliament. And a deputy with us draws a very small allowance, and so you see me living a modest life in a modest house; nor do I own a motorcar. My whole life has been difficulties and troubles, private ones and public ones. But I can say that I have overcome them, all of them; and my one aim was, and still is, the service of my country.

Does it occur to you that I spent eighteen years struggling and striving before I was able to enter parliament? — and this though we women of India did not struggle to obtain our political rights: we struggled for the freedom of our country and stood at the side of our men, and we were imprisoned and suffered the bitterest kinds of torment and privation. It was therefore natural, having given what we gave for the sake of our country's independence, that we should obtain what our men countrymen obtained when that independence was proclaimed. So we entered the parliamentary assemblies, and governed the provinces, and headed the international delegations and the diplomatic missions; and beyond this, all the doors of work were opened before us, to such a

degree that man today looks upon us as upon a mighty competitor.

It is natural, now that we have rid ourselves of colonialism, that we

Continued on page 49

"Wail, you storms, and dance; whistle in the ears, and beat upon the doors as you please — for on this night there is none more mad than you, none more violent... except my heart!"

•

"Sway, you tall trees behind my window, and toss loose your hair like a jinn-maiden of the jungles forsaken by her lover — for in this fearsome rage of yours there is nothing but a picture... of certain states of my heart!"

•

"And the spray of snow on the peaks of our mountains — the wind scatters it wherever it will... and the moment it lets droop its two transparent wings, worn out with weariness, the mountain yawns, wrapped beneath a pure white mantle... And what do I care if the slopes wrestle one another, seared by yellow jealousy, so long as you are like this mountain in its whiteness and its purity?..."

•

... Pictures, leaping about in my imagination, on this day of yours, my heart — the day life uttered you forth out of nothingness and you became a reality possessed of being, pulsing with warmth and blood, its two mantles brimming with hopes...

And whenever a new remembrance of that day of yours came back to us, I would pass my night with raging nerves and drowned eyes, and I would feel you folded in upon yourself in pride, like a snail in a far-off sea: whenever it fancies that a hand is tempting it, it slips out of sight, swift and light, and shuts fast against it a sealed barrier!

What awakening knocked at your door today? Or has some feather of light brushed your walls with its radiance, so that a trace of it still clings to you?!

I asked you, my heart... How long shall this hermit's life tyrannize over you, so that you will not join people in their merriment and loose your throat in plaintive song?

How long shall this shrinking from savory food and from the good things of life tyrannize over you?

I see you brooding on the edge of revolt, like a lion gathering himself to spring... and I glimpse upon your interlaced lashes the shadow of something that resembles happiness!

Is there some new glad tiding?...

I have adjured you, my heart: will you not cast off your tattered, worn-out garment, and tighten the strings of your lyre, that together we may play and sing... your lost melody?!

February 1, 1953

Aphrodite